The BTIA held a meeting on Thursday marking the end of consultations with all of its chapters to ventilate the proposals for large scale development in the Placencia area for cruise tourism. Appearing on Love FM’s Morning Show were the President of the Belize Tourism Industry Association, Herbert Haylock and Stuart Krohn, the Chairman of the Placencia chapter.
HERBERT HAYLOCK
“It’s not only Harvest Caye, there was an initial effort at Crawl Caye Development site and we had put out a public statement on May 29 on that matter in relation to development in the south and then again, a few weeks after that we started hearing and the information came out that Harvest Caye is a next option. We essentially went back to the table in terms of looking at this matter; the two chapters in the south, both the Toledo chapter and the Placencia Chapter, both put forward early positions on that matter and again, now from a national perspective, we are once again underscoring the initial position that we put out in the May 29 release that we are not supporting and not in support in the level of development that is being proposed with the Harvest Caye location and site. We want to take it one step further, beyond not necessarily being in support of that particular development and for all the reasons that we put forward before, the environmental concerns, the developmental concerns, the concerns as it relates to moving completely away from what again has been laid out as a direction strategically, as it relates to the master plan but we want to also look at what is now a matter that has now surfaced as it relates to the MOU that is in the media and that has been circulating over the recent week or two. There are some very specific concerns in there that we are not supporting and cannot support because of the dynamics of those particular clauses and agreements; we have seen it in a draft format; obviously, we understand and we hear that there are changes to be made but notwithstanding that you are still looking at an agreement that provides and essentially gives away much more than what we would receive as a country and those are glaring concerns that need to be looked at, voiced and considered and there perhaps need to be some reconsideration of some of these things that have been put forward in that MOU.”
Meanwhile, Stuart Krohn explained that tourism has been the bread and butter industry from year to year for Belize and allowing large scale cruise tourism in the south will pose a serious threat to the way investors have planned that area. The described the Memorandum of Understanding and the concept of mass cruise tourism in southern Belize are a disaster.
STUART KROHN
“What we cannot understand is why when you have an industry that is going on such a great path and you see the releases from BTB, we grew ten percent in 2012 and we are going to grow another 8 or 9 percent in 2013; far beyond what our competitors are doing. Why would you want to inject a low class, cheap mass product to an area that is doing so well on what has been the traditional path of tourism; it doesn’t make any sense. For years in the tourism industry we said there is no plan, we don’t know where we are going, let’s get a plan; well, quite brilliantly, a couple years back the BTB and the Ministry of Tourism spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with an independent set of consultants to establish a plan. They brought it to Cabinet; Cabinet approved it, there it is: the National Sustainable Master Tourism Plan. That plan clearly states, words have meaning, you know; it clearly states that pocket cruise tourism is the only acceptable form of tourism on the south eastern coast of Belize; ‘only’, I don’t know what different interpretation you can use for the word, ‘only’. Pocket cruise tourism, in the same document, defines it as cruise ships of under 250 passengers. Now, NCL comes along or the Ministry of Investment comes along and says, ‘guess what, we have this deal and NCL wants to buy an island and the biggest ships they would bring would bring 400 people; 4000 vs. 250; so, how do you go from this master plan of 250 and under to suddenly having ships of four thousand people and you the Ministry of Tourism saying, this is a good thing. The Minister of Tourism and the CEO in the Ministry of Tourism have been utterly silent on this issue. This is a huge issue for the industry; this isn’t just about Placencia and how many people are walking on the sidewalk; it is a huge change, a 180 degree change of direction for the industry and ministry has not consulted one iota and has not made one public statement.”
Krohn says that the Placencia BTIA will internationalize the issue.
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